Arrest warrant issued for former CATS Director

BATON ROUGE - An arrest warrant has been issued for former CATS Director Isaiah Marshall. It involves money he took for repairs on a flood-damaged home in Baton Rouge.

Tonight, the WBRZ Investigative Unit confirmed with the State Contractor's Licensing Board Marshall does not have a commercial or residential contractor's license.

Marshall is accused of taking $82,964 from a homeowner to perform work on her flood-damaged home. An arrest warrant shows Marshall did some of the work, but left the residence in July of 2017 and has not been back since. The warrant goes on to say the contractor license that was presented to the homeowner did not belong to Marshall, but to a person in New Orleans.

Today, WBRZ went looking for Marshall and informed him that there was an active arrest warrant.

"We just learned of the warrant today, probably once you notified Mr. Marshall's family," Niles Haymer, Marshall's attorney said. "That's when we discovered the warrant. In talking to Mr. Marshall we feel this is a civil issue that has been made criminal."

Haymer said Marshall was given permission to use his uncle's permit to do the work.

However, the state said that was not supposed to happen. There were a number of issues. First, a commercial license was used to perform work on the residence. Second, the checks were made out to Marshall instead of the company that was listed on the permit. Third, the arrest warrant shows the owner of the company that has the permit said he was not aware of Marshall using the license.

Leann Evans with the State Contractor Licensing Board said red flags should have gone up.

"A lot of times homeowners will make out a check to an individual, and sometimes an individual is listed on a license and that's ok," Evans said. "But, checks need to be made out to the name on the license. If it's a company name it needs to be made out to that company, so if a contractor asks you to make out checks to him and that's not what his license is in...it should be a red flag."

Marshall's attorney said Marshall will turn himself in Monday. He faces one count of felony residential contractor fraud.